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The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages (Viking) is the winner / medalist of the 2007 Judy Lopez Memorial Award for Children's Literature.

Honor books are:

A Drowned Maiden's Hair: a Melodrama by Laura Amy Schlitz (Candlewick)

The Road to Paris by Nikki Grimes (Putnam)

Gemini Summer by Iain Lawrence (Delacorte)

The award will be presented on Sunday, June 10, at a dinner and presentation from 5:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m., at the U.C.L.A. Faculty Center.

The Judy Lopez Memorial Awards for Children's Literature are granted annually to works of literary excellence for nine- to twelve-year-olds. The awards are made in remembrance of Judy Lopez, a founding member of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Women's National Book Association who was deeply interested in seeing that children's literature of quality is recognized and rewarded.

A panel of judges composed of children's librarians and other professionals in the field of books for young readers selects the winning book and three honor books. Books submitted for the award must have been published in the United States in the year that precedes the award. The author must be a United States citizen or a resident of the United States.

The medal awarded the winning book was designed by sculptor Alex Shagrin and is cast in solid bronze. The medalist and the authors of the honor books are celebrated each June at a reception and dinner held in Los Angeles.

Established in 1985, the Judy Lopez Memorial Awards for Children's Literature are administered by the Women's National Book Association, Los Angeles Chapter, in association with the Judy Lopez Memorial Foundation.

Remember how I reported on the Scott O'Dell Award ceremony? At the time, I may have mentioned the speech of Ellen Klages. I may even have said something along the lines of, "It was one of those speeches you wish Horn Book would consider reprinting in one format or another." Well, Horn Book be damned, me mateys, I'LL reprint it! How's that for initiative? And lest you think I've spent hours transcribing these words from the tiny tape recorder I keep in my pocket at all times, I have Ms. Klages herself to thank for sending me the speech in its entirety. Voila.

First of all, I want to thank Scott O’ Dell and his wife Elizabeth Hall, for founding this award and for recognizing the importance of historical fiction, especially for children. I want to thank Hazel Rochman and Ann Carlson and Roger Sutton, the members of the O’Dell committee, for selecting The Green Glass Sea out of the hundreds of amazing books that were published in 2006. I want to thank my editor, Sharyn November, and her boss, Regina Hayes, for taking a chance not only on a first novel, but one that seemed an unlikely topic for a children’s book. And all the people at Viking, all the sales reps who were so enthusiastic and hand-sold this book to booksellers and librarians. And thanks to my agent, Michael Bourret, who shepherded it from a manuscript to an object out in the world.

A lot of people think that history is boring. It’s just names and dates and facts that you have to memorize for a test. I suspect that I’m preaching to the choir here; I don’t think most of the people in the room feel that way. But too many people do.

Up until last October, I was primarily a science fiction writer. Which means I’m in a unique position to recognize that this -- [holds up GGS] -- is a time machine. ‘Cause that’s really what we want out of historical fiction. We want to go there. We don’t want to be on the outside, looking in. We want the backstage tour. We want to be there as the events of history are unfolding around us.

That’s what we want as readers. Most writers are also readers, but for a writer, it’s slightly different. If I’m going to spend a year or two of my life someplace in the past, there has to be a hook. We writers are observant magpies, taking shiny bits back to our nests to play with. And we’re easily distracted -- ooh, shiny!

For me, that shiny was the green glass. I read one sentence about it in an account of the Trinity Test, and I thought -- cool -- and I wanted to find out more. And there isn’t much more about it, because the glass was a footnote, a side effect. It wasn’t all that important to the scientists at the time. But it was what got me hooked.

So I read some more books, and in each of them I found another, one sentence, description of the glass, or of people going to go see the glass. And I took those single sentences home and collected them, lined my little magpie nest with them, until I had enough information that I could almost see it, in my mind’s eye.

And I wanted to go there.

I wanted to go there more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. But it’s gone. It was bulldozed before I was even born, and the only picture I’ve ever been able to find of it is in black-and-white.

If I was a painter, I would have made a big color picture, hung it on my wall and looked at it. But I can’t even draw. My tools are words. So I wrote myself a story in which I got to go to the green glass sea, in the company of two odd, quirky little girls named Dewey and Suze. And I saw it -- through their eyes.

Because that’s the other important thing about historical fiction. It reminds us that history isn’t just dates and facts and places. It’s people and their lives and their stories. Sometimes it’s extraordinary people in ordinary times, changing the world. And sometimes it’s ordinary people in extraordinary times, as the world changes around them.
By seeing the past through their eyes -- how they live, what they do, how they think -- we get a new perspective on the present.

[Picks up GGS] If you accept that this is a time machine, then there’s one thing you need to know, the one unbreakable law of time travel -- you cannot change the past.
But I hope that when you close the cover of The Green Glass Sea, and return to your own life, you may discover that the past has changed you.

Thank you.

Usually when I've detached myself from an event that involved delicious food and kidlit chatter I like to give myself a few days to decompress before hammering out some kind of encapsulation of the event. That works especially well if no one at said event knows who I am. Yesterday, however, Sharyn November (editor extraordinaire, y'all) asked if I'd be blogging about the thingy thing I was attending and my reaction was peppier than I'd intended. I seem to have said, "YOU BET!" Then again, why not? Let's try the whole while-it's-still-fresh-in-your-mind approach. What have I got to lose?

So yesterday was the day the Scott O'Dell Award was officially bestowed upon author Ellen Klages for her book The Green Glass Sea. The bestowing, as it happened, occurred at a little restaurant called Choice. Inside, the place was reserved entirely for the O'Dellolites (well YOU try to come up with a name for them then) and I was happy. Roger Sutton was there. The charming Laura Lutz from Queens (who should seriously consider blogging, missy) was there. Rita Auerbach. TWO (count 'em) TWO Newbery committee members including Monica Edinger and my BPL homie Michael Santangelo. There were numerous others who will forgive me for not mentioning them by name, and of course, star of the evening, author Ellen Klages.

Let me tell you a little something about Ellen Klages. I love her. I'm not saying I didn't love her before I met her or anything. Sure, her book was well-written and a helluva lot of fun. And it certainly fulfilled every requirement a person could possibly have in mind regarding smart historical fiction. But see, the thing about writers is that you just never know. It would be nice if every book gave a clue as to how cool its respective author is, but this is simply not always the case. Ms. Klages, however, is the kind of person you want to sit down with over a cup of coffee for hours at a time just so you can pick her brain for a while. She was much in demand, however, so brain picking had to be foreshortened. I was able to ask her about the cover change The Green Glass Sea went through. As you might recall, Roger Sutton displayed the before and after of that particular image and it turns out that the girl in Cover #1 was from an old photograph owned by Ms. Klages herself. And yes, sure as shooting, people assumed that the kid was Anne Frank so the entire look was reworked before publication.

The presentation of the award was in fine fettle. Ms. Klages was introduced by, I believe, chair Hazel Rochman. She in turn gave props to her fellow committee members Roger Sutton and Ann Carlson. She also happened to mention some interesting facts regarding Mr. Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins. Many people turned the book down, it seems, because they wanted the lead character to be a boy rather than a girl. Huh.

Then Ellen Klages stood up to speak and she killed, brother. Killed. It was one of those speeches you wish Horn Book would consider reprinting in one format or another. Klages has the enviable ability of speaking naturally in front of a large group while at the same time never straying off topic, losing her train of thought, or being anything less than truly interesting. She described her fascination with the original glass sea, and how no one ever took a single color photograph of it before it was bulldozed out of existence. She mentioned that she has a piece of the glass which she carries around in her pocket within small black pouch. She used to carry it around in her own homemade lead container, but the glass tended to shatter that way. We then got a rousing explanation of how Ms. Klages melted down lead soldiers on her stove, then poured the lead into an Altoids container to create the box. Someone had apparently pointed out to her that the melting of lead was probably more dangerous than the radioactive glass, but she certainly took precautions. The conclusion drawn by one and all was that there was more than a drop of Dewey (the book's protagonist) in Ms. Klages. That's for sure.

Another thing I took away from the evening was that Ms. Klages has previously worked on adult sci-fi. This caused me to prick up my ears. Perhaps... perhaps she might consider writing some sci-fi children's books? I'm waiting for that particular trend to pick up and take wing, but so far no great sci-fi American children's author has appeared in the last decade or so. Perhaps Ms. Klages could fill this void.

The tables about the room were spotted with lovely roughened green sea glass which was just enchanting, if also mildly unnerving. The food consisted of tender meats, cheeses, wine, crab-like balls of something, wine, brownies, fruit salads, quesadillas, and wine. All in all, a brilliant little ceremony and proof positive that the Scott O'Dell Award is making some excellent choices these days.

I became very excited reading the first chapter of The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages. In 1943, Dewey Kerrigan is on her way to join her father at Los Alamos, New Mexico where, though she doesn't know it, he's helping to develop the atomic bomb. It's a top secret location for a top secret project. None of the children living there actually know what their parents are working on, just that it's part of the war effort.

The period detail in that first chapter was marvelous. I got a definite "You Are There" feeling regarding Dewey's train trip. And while on her journey she meets a historical figure whose name I recognized. He's described. He's named. He seems engaging.

Okay, I found Dewey, herself, a little flat but maybe she was just a bit depressed. Her grandmother had just had a stroke and she was being "shipped" west. I thought I could get used to this young girl geek with her interest in and gift for gadgets.

Well, the period detail remains rich and well done throughout The Green Glass Sea. But there didn't seem to me to be much of a story here to go along with it. Dewey is an odd duck who enjoys being among the great scientific minds who have gathered at her new home. That's great. But instead of developing that, a conflict is set up with another girl who also has trouble with the in-kids in town. The set-up takes a long time. The girls don't actually start butting heads until halfway through the book, and their problems are resolved with a minimum of fuss and bother.

There's not much of a plot. Things happen without much causal relationship--it's more a list of events. People are really upset when Roosevelt dies, which I'm sure is historically accurate. But since he never appeared in the story prior to the announcement of his death--we never so much as see people listening to a fireside chat--it's hard to feel their pain. Another death is totally meaningless. There's no reason why it had to happen, and it really doesn't change day-to-day events.

And that historical figure from the first chapter? He's only mentioned in passing two more times in the story. Quite a bit of time and energy was put into him early on, only to have him virtually disappear.

But the setting for The Green Glass Sea is still marvelous. Klages creates a lost world where children could be left alone all day and into the evening while their parents worked to save democracy. Moms could puff away on Chesterfields as if lung cancer hadn't been invented. (Which I guess you could say it hadn't.) Twenty cents could buy a kid a Coke and a candy bar, and nobody worried about the caffeine and calories she was consuming. "The slice of life" aspect of the book is very good.

The Green Glass Sea has won the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. The book also began as a short story at Strange Horizons. (Don't read it until after you've read the book.)

I think it's only fair to mention, by the way, that I appear to be alone in my objections to Green Glass's plot. The book has been very well reviewed both in print and at blogs.

Everything's back to normal. A big old award came out and I missed hearing about it until now. Apparently the more than deserving Ellen Klages has won the Scott O'Dell Award for The Green Glass Sea. Roger Sutton, who announced the results on his blog, was on the committee that selected the winner. A big congrats going out to Ms. Klages, then. Hers was a truly enjoyable novel and worthy of the honor.

Thanks to Roger Sutton for the link.

I am thrilled to learn via Read Roger that Ellen Klages has won the Scott O'Dell Award for her novel The Green Glass Sea. Roger, who is on the committee, writes, "The award is presented to a children's or young adult book published in English by a U.S. publisher and set in the Americas."

Here's a link to my recent review.